Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Welcome to Fantasy Island

I mean this seriously: What could go wrong? I can't think of a single thing.

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

Looser building codes? Few restrictions on weapons?

Pussies!

Also, Too: If this dumbass thinks $1.25M will get anywhere near the construction of a liveable platform in international waters, he's dumber than most other libertarians. (He and his Randian Supermen pals can't even time-share Ashton Kutcher's set trailer with that pittance.) Either he believes there's a couple hundred thousand more libertarian tools with $1M bills burning holes in their elasticized slacks, or he's planning on being very old when the thing gets built.